Beautiful Mendenhall

Nice day after the showers ended. We’re off to Donna’s for breakfast. This is just a little local place near the airport but good food and they serve breakfast all day.

From Donna’s we took a ride through Juneau and out to ‘the end’ of the road south of town. There’s only one cruise ship in today. We are starting to see more people and ships now and Juneau is a big port. Exploring this road we got a feel for the local flavor of housing. They are modest homes and obviously fishermen - a boat in every yard. However, Juneau is the capital of Alaska and ‘the end’ of the road is not where the politicians live. The Juneau area definitely has that city feel to it.

Driving back down Mendenhall Loop Rd we followed it to the Mendenhall Glacier. This is one glacier you can almost walk up to. The Visitor Center is really nice with an observatory, exhibits, and auditorium where we watched a great video on the Juneau Icefield and the glacier. Mendenhall is a tongue of ice reaching 12 miles from Juneau Icefield to Mendenhall Lake. It’s ice reaches 100 to 1800 feet deep and is more than 1.5 miles wide.

Leaving the center we took a path to “Photo Point”. The park ranger was there and explained about the Arctic Terns that were nesting there. They are fantastic birds and they hover in mid air. These birds have two summers each year as they leave their northern home on the oceans of Antarctica and then return. This trip is about 44,300 miles each year! We watched them, enjoyed the glacier view.

Next we took a path leading to the glacier and beautiful Nugget Falls. The ice bergs floating in the lake were amazing. Glacial ice has a unique crystalline structure that absorbs and reflects light, giving the ice its blue color. The most intense color is found in crevasses and when ice breaks from the face of the glacier. At the end of the path we could walk right up to the waterfalls. The power of the melting water coming out of the rocks was deafening. Up close the glacier colors and formations are unbelievable. The glacier calved yesterday, but nothing today.

There was a notice along the trail that a Sow and 2 cubs had been seen on the upper trail, just above us, the day before. On the way back we sat on a log and listened to the sound of nature. Then we went in search of a personal size berg in the lake. Ken fished one out from the edge. It was so clear and he said it weighed about 40 lbs, it was also very sharp.

We put the berg back in the lake and went back to the Visitor Center. The cruise buses are arriving and a couple of young men were sitting outside on a rock eating sandwiches and the ranger had to tell them to eat inside because of the bears. You really have to pay attention!

We really enjoyed the glacier. Back home we had dinner and called it a day.

Pictures:View across Mendenhall Lake, Approaching Mendenhall, Ken on glacier path, Mendenhall Waterfall, Water and glacier, Mendenhall up close, Kens berg